Gone Away
by arliddian
Summary: Half-spoken words and broken hearts; this was never how it was meant to be. Ten/Rose one-shot set after Doomsday. Inspired by 'Gone Away' by Lucy Schwartz.


**Gone Away**

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**Summary: **Half-spoken words and broken hearts; this was never how it was meant to be. Ten/Rose one-shot set after _Doomsday_. Inspired by 'Gone Away' by Lucy Schwartz.  
**Author's Note:** Written for Challenge 97 (_'mp3'_) for the Then There's Us LJ community.  
**Disclaimer:** Don't own it; don't sue me.

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_I've been finding puzzle pieces of us  
kept in the dust  
I've been hiding letters and photograph frames  
to forget your name_

_We were never meant to be this damn broken_  
_Words were never meant to be this half spoken_

_Falling in the space between_  
_The universe and all we see_  
_Has gone away_  
_Gone away_

A little while after Donna said goodbye, when the elation of saving the Earth yet again had worn off and he was faced with the reality of being on his own again, the Doctor walked slowly around the TARDIS with a large box, collecting together every reminder that Rose had left behind.

Her jacket, lying in the console room. Her favourite teacup, patterned with delicate pink swirls, on the kitchen table. The trashy romance novel she had purchased from a newsstand on Paravine II, face-down on a chair in the library. An almost-empty tube of lip gloss and a hairbrush, discarded on a bathroom counter. A pair of high-heeled shoes, tossed carelessly into a corner of the karaoke bar.

He set his mouth in a grim line and handled her things without examining them too closely, afraid that the tiny pinpricks of pain he felt when he touched each item would blossom into something much harder to ignore. He ignored the whispering memories that tugged at his mind: memories of trips they had taken, monsters they had faced, souvenirs they had collected, lives they had saved. Memories of the flick of her hair, the contours of her smile, the colour of her eyes, the sound of her laugh, the feel of her hand in his.

No. To dwell on those thoughts now would be to stop and look back, and he never looked back. He couldn't. Because once he started, he would never be able to stop.

When the box was full, he stood outside the door to Rose's room, staring at it and wondering how a door in his own ship could be so inviting and so forbidding all at once.

He reached out and fingered the bundle of iridescent crystals hanging from the doorknob. Rose had bought them from a marketplace on Zoaam, from a fortune-teller who told her that they would keep evil spirits from sneaking into her room. Rose had turned to him and nudged him with her shoulder. _Maybe this'll keep you from gettin' at my chocolate stash, _she'd teased, looking at him cheekily with that perfect grin, her tongue peeking out between her teeth.

When was the last time he saw that smile? He couldn't remember. The last time he had seen her face, she had been crying at Bad Wolf Bay, a whole universe away. He had tried to say goodbye - had tried to say so much more than just 'goodbye' - and even that had been ripped away from him.

This wouldn't do. He had to stop. He'd had his opportunity to tell her. He'd had a thousand opportunities to tell her, all that time they had spent together on the TARDIS, all those times he had thought one or the other of them might die, and he'd never been able to say it. And now, that was it. No second chances. Roughly, he shoved open the door and dropped the box next to the bed, trying to keep his eyes fixed firmly on the floor so he couldn't look around and drown in all the memories, all the regrets.

A picture frame on the bedside table glinted in the light from the hallway and caught his eye. Despite his better judgment, he glanced at it.

It was a picture of the two of them, both with huge, exaggerated, silly smiles on their faces, a riot of red and gold lanterns in the background. It was from a trip they had taken to China during the Lunar New Year. He didn't know that she'd gotten the picture developed, but here it was: both of them together and undeniably, heartrendingly happy. This fresh evidence of the joy they had shared left him feeling emptier and lonelier than ever.

With a sniff and a quick shake of his head, the Doctor make a hasty retreat. Perhaps it was immature, but he couldn't resist slamming Rose's door on the way out.

He set coordinates for a long journey, and the TARDIS set off unusually smoothly and quietly, obviously sensing and sympathising with his pain. With a small but grateful smile, he ran a hand fondly along one of the coral struts before settling into the jump seat for the flight.

He fell asleep for a brief four minutes. He dreamt of the Void and of Rose's scream and a Pete who arrived two seconds too late. And helplessness. He dreamt of his own utter helplessness.

He woke up just as the Void swallowed her fingertips, disoriented and full of panic. It took him a second to remember that he was safe in the TARDIS, not clinging onto a clamp in Torchwood Tower. It took another second to blink away the image of sheer, gut-wrenching terror he had seen reflected in Rose's eyes. And it took him a second longer to remember that she hadn't been lost to the Void at all, but was living, _thriving_, just another universe away.

Even after the panic subsided and his hearts returned to a normal, steady pace, the thought did not bring him any comfort. Rose was still lost to him, and he was still alone.

* * *

_I've been chasing my steps in fingerprint clues  
and clips of the news  
Wondering why in our lives the wind calls our name  
and we're never the same_

_We were never meant to be this damn broken_  
_Words were never meant to be this half spoken_

_Falling in the space between_  
_The universe and all we see_  
_Has gone away_  
_Gone away_

The first few months Rose had spent in this universe had been terrible, but she had begun to come to terms with never seeing him again. She had started thinking of starting her life over, somehow. Half a life without him, but a life nonetheless.

And then his voice had curled around her name, whispered in her dreams, and that was all it took. She had to find him, had to see him again, had to hold his hand and run with him again. Half a goodbye on a beach where she couldn't even touch him wasn't enough. Hearing him say her name again, with that tender, pained look in his eyes - it hadn't been enough. His voice saying her name was the beginning of a sentence that she needed to hear completed. After all she had been through with him, _for _him, she felt she deserved that much.

Now, she rarely ever left Torchwood. When she wasn't crossing universes, praying each time that _this _time would be the right one, she was poring over the readings from the Dimension Cannon, trying to make sense of the interwoven timelines and pinpoint the right place to jump to next.

She knew that her family and Mickey were worried about her. They kept trying to convince her to take a day off, to go for a walk, to get some sleep in her own bed.

She always told them that she was fine, that she couldn't stop because every universe was in danger and she had to do something about it. And they would look at her with eyes full of sympathy and concern, and she knew what they were thinking about her, about him. About them.

She didn't care.

Instead, she kept jumping, following half-deciphered clues gleaned from the Cannon's readings, tracing over every memory of her time with him to add as much information as she could.

Sometimes she found herself reliving some of those moments in a parallel universe, watching another Doctor and another Rose live out an adventure that was almost-but-not-quite the same as how she remembered it. And despite how much it hurt, she always stayed in the shadows and made herself watch until they left. It was a reminder, no matter how flawed, of what she was fighting for.

It was the only glimpse she was ever granted of her Doctor, a strange and bittersweet blessing. Whenever she heard this other Doctor call the other Rose's name, it didn't matter that it was never really _her_ Doctor. What mattered was that it was the Doctor and Rose Tyler, running across the stars together. It was a reminder that this was how they were meant to be. It was how they were _always _meant to be. In every universe, there they were, together.

So she kept on working, crossing reality after reality, keeping one step ahead of the sweeping darkness that threatened everything. And she never stopped believing that one day she would find him. One day, she would hear him whisper her name and finish the rest of that half-spoken sentence.

_Fin_


End file.
